I loved my swim round Britain . . . until I found my tongue in my soup
FROM MARATHONS WHILE PULLING A MINI TO TRIATHLONS CARRYING A TREE, ROSS EDGLEY PUSHES HIS BODY TO INCREDIBLE LENGTHS
NOT a lot can faze Ross Edgley but if there is one thing he despises, it is the word ‘impossible’. This is a man who has had his tongue part- erode during a 1,780-mile swim around Great Britain, ran a marathon while pulling a Mini, did a triathlon while carrying a tree and completed a rope climb the height of Mount Everest.
‘If someone says it is impossible, it appeals to me,’ says Edgley, who has written two books on the art of resilience and physical fortitude. ‘Someone told me it’s impossible to swim around Great Britain so I thought: “Right, hold my beer!”.’
His latest gruelling challenge was to complete a ‘swim with the sun’ last weekend, where he aimed to swim as far as possible between sunrise and sunset off the coast of Dorset. He managed 32.9 miles in seven hours and 11 minutes.
‘Two dolphins paid me a visit,’ he tells Sportsmail. ‘Things like that constantly happen to keep you going. You’ll be struggling and the ocean will just be like: “Here’s two dolphins to cheer you up”. It is pretty poetic.’
That poetic nature of the sea is why Edgley joined forces with Talisker Whisky and Parley for the Oceans, who are aiming to reintroduce wildlife to the sea after a study found only 13 per cent of the world’s oceans are truly untouched.
The sea has not always been Edgley’s best friend. During his 2018 Great British Swim, he had to fight off jellyfish and a disintegrating tongue caused by salt-water exposure which also caused the skin on his neck to become‘ like a rhino’s’.
Aided by his support boat Hecate, Edgley typically swam f or six hours, refuelled and slept for six hours, then swam for another six hours, and so on.
He consumed up to 15,000 calories a day, the equivalent of about 26 Big Mac burgers. Or, for Edgley, bananas. He got through 649 during that 157-day swim.
‘Swims of this length had never really been attempted and doctors did not know what was going to happen to my body,’ says Grantham-born Edgley, 35. ‘When you’re in the sea, it’s no longer just swimming, it’s an entirely different sport.
‘You’re battling Arctic storms, worried about hypothermia, unpeeling jellyfish tentacles from your face, or wondering if that’s a dolphin or a shark next to you.
‘I was sitting on the boat one night eating a bowl of vegetable soup. I asked: “Why does mine have chunks of beef in it?”. And was told, “That’s not beef, it’s pieces of your tongue”.’
Not that that put his mammoth diet on hold. ‘In the middle of the sea, you can barely feel your jaw due to tiredness, that’s why bananas are a staple,’ he says.
‘I end up eating with piping bags like a chef would use to ice a cake, and just pipe mushed-up food into my face. Or I’d swim backstroke and the people on the boat would just pump porridge into my mouth.’
He is keen to prove sports scientists wrong by completing these challenges. ‘When your brain tells you to stop, you’re actually only at about 40 per cent of your body’s capacity,’ he says. ‘We call it a physiological handbrake — don’t let your brain pull that brake!
‘ Leading scientists told Sir Roger Bannister running a fourminute mile was not physically possible. The year after he did it, many more did. The physiological handbrake had been lifted.’
For all his encouters with jellyfish, Edgley knows sealife isn’t all out to sting you.
‘ I was swimming between Bristol and Wales and a minke whale swam next to me for about five hours,’ says Edgley who works as a personal trainer and a motivational speaker as well as being an author. ‘ She was guiding me to Wales. As soon as we got to shallower waters, she breached one final time and disappeared.’
It is these tales which give him an affinity with the water. He has seen the best but also the worst, such as shipping lane sand plastic pollution, which is why he is keen to promote a drive to clean up the oceans.
‘The pain is just a penance and worth it for what you see at sea,’ he says. ‘After the Great British Swim, about 400 people came to see me finish in Margate. We initiated a giant swim hug — I was hugging and kissing everyone, I was so happy!’
Embracing strangers may be ill-advised now but Edgley has promised to be back in 2021 with another logic-defying challenge.
ROSS EDGLEY is part of a drive to rewild the world’s polluted seas, in association with Talisker Whisky and Parley: www.rewildourseas.com
I’d do backstroke so porridge could be pumped into my mouth